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Why WebQuests? - A WebQuest for Teacher Candidates

Introduction:

Originally developed by Bernie Dodge in 1995 a WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners’ time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners’ higher-order thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

A WebQuest is an excellent example of an Open Educational Resource. But where did the idea for WebQuests come from? What makes a good WebQuest? Why use WebQuests? In this WebQuest you will tackling these questions and more.

The Task:

To use a WebQuest, or to create a WebQuest of your own, you need to develop a thorough understanding of what a WebQuest is, and why they are valuable.

To do this you will start by reviewing the history of WebQuests, before critically analyzing a number of webquest examples. From multiple perspectives you will discuss what a good WebQuest looks like when you see it. That's your task in this exercise.

By the end of this quest, you and your group will answer these questions:

2. Next each group member will have a hard copy of the worksheet. To answer the questions given above, you'll break into groups of four. Within the group, each of you will take on one of the following roles:

The Efficiency Expert: You value time a great deal. You believe that too much time is wasted in today's classrooms on unfocused activity and learners not knowing what they should be doing at a given moment. To you, a good WebQuest is one that delivers the most learning bang for the buck. If it's a short, unambitious activity that teaches a small thing well, then you like it. If it's a longterm activity, it had better deliver a deep understanding of the topic it covers, in your view.

The Affiliator: To you, the best learning activities are those in which students learn to work together. WebQuests that force collaboration and create a need for discussion and consensus are the best in your view. If a WebQuest could be done by a student working alone, it leaves you cold.

The Altitudinist: Higher level thinking is everything to you. There's too much emphasis on factual recall in schools today. The only justification for bringing technology into schools is if it opens up the possibility that students will have to analyze information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of something. You also value sites that allow for some creative expression on the part of the learner.

The Technophile: You love this internet thang. To you, the best WebQuest is one that makes the best use of the technology of the Web. If a WebQuest has attractive colors, animated gifs, and lots of links to interesting sites, you love it. If it makes minimal use of the Web, you'd rather use a worksheet.

3. Individually, you'll examine each of the sites below and use the worksheet to jot down some notes of your opinions of each from the perspective of your role. You'll need to examine each site fairly quickly. Don't spend more than 15 minutes on any one site.

4. When everyone in the group has seen all the Webquests, it's time to get together to answer the questions. One way to proceed would be to go around and poll each team member for the best two and worst two from their perspective. Pay attention to each of the other perspectives, even if at first you think you might disagree with them.

5. There will probably not be unanimous agreement, so the next step is to talk together to hammer out a compromise consensus about your team's nominations for best and worst. Pool your perspectives and see if you can agree on what's best for the learner.

6. As prospective teachers would you use WebQuests? Why? Why not?

7. One person in each group should record the group's thoughts.

8. When debriefing time is called, report your results to the whole class. Do you think the other groups will agree with your conclusions?

Conclusion:

Ideally, this exercise will provide you with some background about the history of WebQuests and why they are useful open educatinal resources. This WebQuest will also give you a larger pool of ideas to work with as you develop your WebQuest-making skills. To find more WebQuests you can search on Curriki.org, or on the WebQuest.org site. But remember the best WebQuest is yet to be written and it might be yours!

Watch this How to Make a WebQuest
video:

Rather than using Quest Garden we will build our WebQuest on The Curriki.org site.